Been using with Claude via MCP to tag a bunch of old ripped CDs - fun with mixed results.
is Claude "listening" to the music in order to tag it?
No, just uses the mutagen or beets libraries via python
Beets: The music geek’s media organizer
111–120 of 124 posts
Re: Beets: The music geek’s media organizer
#112Consider a case where a DJ's entire show can be downloaded as a single MP3, AND there is a complete playlist for the show. Is there any software that can use this to break up the single mp3 into the numerous individual song tracks ? And insert metadata ? And perhaps also fingerprint each track to match it to a specific version of the song ?
If the playlist is something like a CUE file then yes, certainly. CUETools/XLD/foobar2000 can split by cue file. And Picard can do audio fingerprints to match tracks and get metadata for them.
In the case I describe there's no CUE files. There's a DJ writing the playlist as the show proceeds, and the typical entry is Artist and Song title. So it's enough information to do a search, but maybe not enough to identify the particular version, and then you have to find the boundary between tracks in the mp3.
So this might be a task for A.I. - to automate it with sufficient precision.
Re: Beets: The music geek’s media organizer
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
> actually, which makes me wonder why I'm keeping all these FLACs around Sometime last year, I actually redownloaded all my BC files, and reripped all my CDs (had to re-do genres, but that was fine, I wanted cleaner genres anyway). It’s simply archival. Lossless means you can convert it to whatever file you might want in the future without loss of quality. This made extra sense for my CD rips, because many of those w…
I'm wondering about diminishing returns, because up until switching to FLAC about 10 years ago I ripped all my CDs to 320k and thus only have about 20 files in my "low bitrate" auto playlist that are weird indie or bootleg things that I couldn't bring myself to delete for nostalgia reasons. Is FLAC really all that much better? Can anybody hear the difference? I don't want to spend months awkwardly moving thousands of…
It seems like many people online say that there is no perceptible difference between e.g, 320kb/s mp3 and "flac" (which usually means CD-quality 44.1kHz 16-bit). Often sources say something about there being no way it sounds different and then talk about the Nyquist theorem [0].
Personally I don't get it as for me, there is a clear difference not only between mp3 vs. CD, but even between different bitrates beyond that. Maybe I'm not typical as I've been usually listening to stuff through studio monitors and also usually through a recording interface which handles 192kHz and >24-bit.
Definitely I noticed on certain systems you aren't going to notice a difference as the system itself is the bottleneck (i.e, bluetooth). In my experience though if you use the right driver, so ASIO or WASAPI in Windows (or anything in Mac and Linux nowadays), I can tell the difference instantly on recordings I know well.
Most music did not get released in ultra HD but some things are available in 96kHz and beyond. I recommend checking out Radiohead, Bob Marley, or Pink Floyd in ultra-HD ( >= 48kHz, >= 24-bit) as there have been releases. I have found Bob Marley - Legend in 192kHz 24-bit and it sounds incredible. You can hear each individual member of the percussion section.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist-Shannon_sampling_theor...
Re: Beets: The music geek’s media organizer
#114A few people commenting that some of their collection "doesn't exist in any DB", the best way to fix it is to add it to Musicbrainz[0] yourself! I have found that adding things to Musicbrainz is actually pretty easy (and if you are so inclined like me, pretty rewarding and fun). Streaming releases (and Bandcamp) you simply drop the release URL into Harmony[1] and it does most of the work for you. Musicbrainz can repr…
You're still assuming that all of a person's music metadata _belongs_ in a global database. Some of my collection includes: -"frankenstein" musical soundtracks where I've assembled my favorite version of each song from all the various published recordings. Sometimes I've even edited pieces of different recordings together into a hybrid track. -a soundboard recording of my friend's high school talent show performance…
I have similar reservations about custom tags. My collection makes heavy use of non-standard tags, such as performer:, opus, key, subtitle, or style. I can't find anything in the documentation about which tags are supported, or for which formats (I keep A/V registrations in Matroska containers, using the same tagging convention -- like using performer: to save actor credits).
There is value for me in having a central database for this data, for example to find misspellings of the same name. But the fear of having 20 years of custom data entry destroyed by an overzealous tool makes me very hesitant to even try a solution like this.
Re: Beets: The music geek’s media organizer
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
> actually, which makes me wonder why I'm keeping all these FLACs around Sometime last year, I actually redownloaded all my BC files, and reripped all my CDs (had to re-do genres, but that was fine, I wanted cleaner genres anyway). It’s simply archival. Lossless means you can convert it to whatever file you might want in the future without loss of quality. This made extra sense for my CD rips, because many of those w…
I'm wondering about diminishing returns, because up until switching to FLAC about 10 years ago I ripped all my CDs to 320k and thus only have about 20 files in my "low bitrate" auto playlist that are weird indie or bootleg things that I couldn't bring myself to delete for nostalgia reasons. Is FLAC really all that much better? Can anybody hear the difference? I don't want to spend months awkwardly moving thousands of…
I started ripping before FLAC was a thing, and my first albums are all in 256k CBR mp3. I've never seen a big reason to re-do them. Yes, the files have gone through LAME's acoustic filter so they don't match the original bit-for-bit, but I mostly can't tell the difference. There have been a few times when I got annoyed by audio quality issues, but it's been 50/50 that it turned out those were also on the cd, so either a deliberate choice or a mistake during mastering.
As others say, there is an issue with compounding losses when you transcode mp3 to vorbis or opus, but I've never needed to do that -- and when I export, it's to move the files to lower-quality devices anyway.
Re: Beets: The music geek’s media organizer
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the playlist is something like a CUE file then yes, certainly. CUETools/XLD/foobar2000 can split by cue file. And Picard can do audio fingerprints to match tracks and get metadata for them.
In the case I describe there's no CUE files. There's a DJ writing the playlist as the show proceeds, and the typical entry is Artist and Song title. So it's enough information to do a search, but maybe not enough to identify the particular version, and then you have to find the boundary between tracks in the mp3. So this might be a task for A.I. - to automate it with sufficient precision.
Don't most DJ sets have elaborate cross-fades between tracks? It may not be possible to find a clean cut, and the best you can hope for is good judgement rather than precision.
Re: Beets: The music geek’s media organizer
#117Anyone have suggestions for automating CD rips into a Beets workflow?
Re: Beets: The music geek’s media organizer
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> actually, which makes me wonder why I'm keeping all these FLACs around Sometime last year, I actually redownloaded all my BC files, and reripped all my CDs (had to re-do genres, but that was fine, I wanted cleaner genres anyway). It’s simply archival. Lossless means you can convert it to whatever file you might want in the future without loss of quality. This made extra sense for my CD rips, because many of those w…
I'm wondering about diminishing returns, because up until switching to FLAC about 10 years ago I ripped all my CDs to 320k and thus only have about 20 files in my "low bitrate" auto playlist that are weird indie or bootleg things that I couldn't bring myself to delete for nostalgia reasons. Is FLAC really all that much better? Can anybody hear the difference? I don't want to spend months awkwardly moving thousands of…
Pioneer DJ, I mean AlphaTheta, probably don't even know MusicBrainz exists. They're too busy selling subscriptions for RekordBox. And they do nothing to help you with the metadata on your files, besides filtering in browser mode.
I can relate to the problem of revising genre or energy ratings over time. I've gone with custom genre tags for ages, ie "dub/house/techno" or "funk/disco/edits" with a sprinkling of extra qualifiers in the comment field and do bulk updates from MP3Tag/Foobar2k. The extras only really help when preparing "crates" for export to USB for outside use, or when just playing off the entire collection at home. I'm fast, but still not much time to read the comment fields when browsing on the players, much less input any words with the scroll wheel.
I keep every purchase around in FLAC, and the part I might realistically play out stays in AIFF, for minimum fiddling of tags (ie stars map a bit differently between Traktor and Rekordbox) - because of course Rekordbox will warn you you're exporting files you can't play anywhere, but won't do anything to transcode them.
Lossless whenever possible because I just want to give the sound quality as much of a chance as I can when recording sets, especially if they might get posted online and getting lossy-transcoded multiple times. I've tried the mp3 of mp3 thing, and you do hear it at home (out at a gig, most of the time, probably not).
I don't suffer from track bulimia, so the numbers work out - and disk space has gotten a lot cheaper in the last 20 years.
Re: Beets: The music geek’s media organizer
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the case I describe there's no CUE files. There's a DJ writing the playlist as the show proceeds, and the typical entry is Artist and Song title. So it's enough information to do a search, but maybe not enough to identify the particular version, and then you have to find the boundary between tracks in the mp3. So this might be a task for A.I. - to automate it with sufficient precision.
Don't most DJ sets have elaborate cross-fades between tracks? It may not be possible to find a clean cut, and the best you can hope for is good judgement rather than precision.
Point taken! So give me an A.I. that knows when to begin/end a track and when to keep two or three tracks glued together cos the segue is sooo smooooth.....
Re: Beets: The music geek’s media organizer
#120Beets is amazing. The fact that it exists is a blessing for those like us who maintain our own music library. I've been wanting to build my own Plex alternative for a while now. I've tried all the other tools out there, but Plex is definitely the least bad tool that let me enjoy my music without subscribing to Spotify and others. I've already spent hours trying to figure out all the things that are required to make t…
There are a lot of alternatives for music servers in the world. Can I ask if you've explored Plex alternatives (Jellyfin, Emby, Lyrion, Navidrome, various Subsonic/OpenSubsonic-compatible servers, etc.), and if so, what you need that they don't do? I ask because I'm working on a new music app for iOS which has pluggable sources, and so my bias is that most of the issues preventing me from easily enjoying my music lib…
Frictionless use is the biggest one.
I can install Plex, all my movies, tv-shows, anime and music is there.
Then I can drop Plexamp on my phone, log in with my Plex account and all my music is right there and if I rate a song on my phone, it's updated on Plex and vice versa.